Аbstract. The contemporary catering market is highly competitive, and it is characterized by a high degree of product and service differentiation. At the same time, it is impossible to talk about the uniformity of its development in all countries, including the regions of the Russian Federation. Over the past 8 years, a significant slowdown in the growth rate of catering turnover has been typical for Russia. The article analyzes the main trends in the catering market of the Altai region, in comparison with the Siberian Federal District and Russia in general. It also identifies those factors hampering the catering enterprises' development. As part of the study, we used such methods as: analysis and synthesis, comparison, statistical methods, modeling, expert assessments, and description. The results of the study presented in the article demonstrate that the development of the public catering industry of the Russian Federation is influenced by a number of factors that do not have pronounced regional specifics. However, regional specifics directly affect the dominance of one or another factor. A vivid example of the severity of the influence of factors is the poor development of the demand for food outside home in agrarian regions in comparison with regions with a high degree of urbanization and the development of industrial production. Dependence of the personnel component in development of the food industry on the presence of specialized educational organizations that train specialists for the regional industry is a another vivid example. As a result of our research, the main vectors of institutional, sectoral and local development of public catering in the region are identified and formulated. It is determined that in the ongoing crisis and import substitution policy, public catering enterprises must rely on local suppliers of raw materials to a greater extent.